


all the colours of the rainbow

by sadie18



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Fashion & Models, Alternate Universe - Muggle, Art, Art School, F/F, Fluff, Pining, and then shes not, tracey is a shitty artist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-11
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2020-07-29 08:00:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20078830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadie18/pseuds/sadie18
Summary: tracey looks at the model and thinks of blue, purple and red.-alternatively, tracey's pretty shit at art. then she isn't





	all the colours of the rainbow

**Author's Note:**

> thank u to elin for providing me with some godly inspiration for this fic this is for u  
chat w me @oliivverwood on tumblr xxooxoxoxoox

Tracey tried hard to drown out any distractions as she plugged in her earbuds and prepped her easel, adjusting the incline and height and setting up pencils to begin her sketch. Around her, there was a flurry of pencil movement, looking fast next to Tracey, who sat there dumbly, her pencil sitting idly between her index and middle fingers. She found herself unable to relax in the lull of the quiet classroom, too warm and sticky with the time of year being the cusp of summertime heat. The rest of the students around her were getting into their own zones, focusing carefully on the semi-nude model sat very still on the stool in front of them.

* * *

_"Class, I'd like you to meet Pansy Parkinson.' The professor announced. 'She'll be your model for this next project. Remember what I said earlier! Take some liberties. Play with shapes and colour codes. Think of it as an experiment. Your grade is defined by how you _execute_ your own vision. See me for more information."_

_Sat on the stool, wearing only a plain black bra and panties to match, was a girl about Tracey's own age, possibly Asian descent, with unkempt chopped black hair and dark, almond shaped eyes, with a crimson lip that held the faint air of a smirk. Her skin was more on the pale side, and from Tracey's position in the room, it looked like she had a spattering of freckles across her cheekbones and the bridge of her nose. She had a nose piercing, a tight silver ring that fit around her nostril Her body was long, crossed legs and feet flat on the floor. Her posture was perfect, back straight, chin up, revealing a long, slim neck and protruding collarbones. The curve of her waist was defined by her obvious ribcage, but she didn't look unhealthy. _

_She seemed completely content to be sitting almost naked in front of a class of artists. In fact, she almost seemed _happy _to do so. _

_Tracey unclenched her fists, and couldn't help but feel like she was salivating. When Pansy met her eyes, the girl doing a sweep of the room, she winked, and Tracey could only manage a weak smile back, hoping Pansy couldn't notice how_ warm _Tracey was feeling_.

_This was the shit she had been trying to avoid. She should have listened to her fucking parents. _

* * *

Freeze frame. Record scratch. Flashback.

* * *

Tracey was born into a very wealthy family, surrounded by very wealthy people and spending most of her life doing very wealthy-people things. This meant going to a pretentious all-girls boarding school, an excuse to for her to be out of the house as the folks rowed heavily, or having extracurriculars like _debate _or _cello classes. _

This didn't stop Tracey from having her life. She studied furiously. She won debates. She had cello concerts (not that her parents would ever attend). 

She went to a few parties. She got drunk. She got high. 

She kissed boys. 

She kissed girls. 

Her family was there for zero steps of the way.

Tracey didn't need her parents to teach her _anything. _Not when she'd proven she could do it all herself. She'd come into her trust fund when she turned 18, easily enough money to pay for university and some. 

When it came to her graduating high school and beginning the rest of her life, only _then _were her parents finally interested in her, when they'd previously decided that Tracey was nothing but a wallflower to their own endeavours. 

_"Take Law, darling." Her mother simpered, as Tracey frantically flipped through pamphlets and websites, each university feeling more like they'd be a burden than an experience. "Harvard. You'd be so close to home, and you'd follow the family footsteps, hm?"_

Harvard had immediately been crossed off her list. Then Yale, then Dartmouth, Brown, Princeton-

It was only not long before she had to start sending applications in that she realised exactly what she wanted. 

To pack her bags and get the _fuck _out.

She was driven by pure angerand _spite, _the _need_ to absolutely _disappoint _her parents like a pulsing heartburn in her chest.

It was two days after her eighteenth birthday when she told her parents that she'd chosen a west coast school and was majoring in _visual arts._ They'd been rendered completely silent. Tracey then told them that she was going to be sharing an apartment with two other strangers. Two _boys. _And finally, to rub salt into the wound, she'd put on her best snobby face and told them that she batted for both teams, and she smiled as her mother's face blanched pale under her heavy makeup, and watched her father mentally flick through all the ways he could stop this, stop _her._ But he couldn't. She'd already claimed her trust. 

She left three days later, moving into the small, three bedroom apartment, and met Draco and Blaise, who she became fast friends with, bonding over shitty parents and the faint spark of rebellion they shared.

Tracey never turned back.

* * *

Unfreeze. Fast forward to the present

* * *

Two and a bit years later after the fateful move, Tracey was fucked. Like, _royally_ fucked. 

If she didn't make this piece _great, _she'd lose marks. If she lost marks, she wouldn't just be scraping by, but instead bombing the class. 

But when Pansy was looking like _that, _she couldn't help but completely zone out, discreetly eyeing her from behind the easel. She turned up her music louder till she was sure everyone else could hear that she was listening to _Chanel, _Frank Ocean. Tracey absentmindedly let her hands work the pencil onto a piece of paper, mindlessly catching the curve of Pansy's cheekbones, the jut of her ribs, her splayed hands resting on her knees. 

It was only till the end of class that she realised that she'd barely finished her sketch, which was somewhat uncoordinated, but Tracey looked at it in awe.

It was one of her best sketches _yet._

"Pansy will be here next time, and we've provided some photo copies in case you need to come in outside of class hours."

Tracey couldn't help but feel a little dirty as she took the photo from the professor passing them around. She'd grown into her own identity long ago, yes, but there was something about _this _exactly that made her feel like she had when she was fourteen and found her dad's playboy mags, warm and _wrong_. 

The photo was an exact replica of the way Pansy was sitting now, her having sat there for two hours straight, only moving to get a drink of water and go to the bathroom once. Through the entire class, her position never changed, but Tracey could swear her smirk got more feral the more she was stared at. 

She quickly stuffed it into her book bag, packing up and rushing outside without another glance at Pansy Parkinson. 

* * *

Tracey, in hindsight, could see the hilarity of the situation, but at the moment, she wasn't glad that _someone_ was laughing. 

"I'm sorry!" Draco choked out between gasps of air and breaths, while Tracey glared at him. "I mean, this is just only the type of shit that would happen to _you._"

Tracey had practically sprinted all the way back to the safety of her own home, irrationally worried someone could see _exactly _the predicament she was in, which was completely impossible but _still. _It was an issue. 

She'd slammed into Draco's room- he then quickly switched tabs from the cat videos he was giggling at to his English essay and swore. 

"Tracey!" He cried out, scandalised. "Knocking? What if I'd been jacking it?"

"As if I've never seen your dick before, _jesus_." She muttered, collapsing onto his bed, face first. "Not like it's anything _impressive._" She ignored his affronted gasp.

Tracey then regaled him with the tale of finding the art class model _completely hot, _and now they were here.

Her groaning and him cackling. 

"It's not _fair._" She moaned into his pillow. "I'm bombing the class enough as it is. She's _gorgeous. _How 'm I s'posed to get _anything _done?" 

Draco patted her on the shoulder, a sweet attempt at consoling her but useless nonetheless. "Show me your sketch, then, come on. Can't be worse than the one of the fruit bowl, remember that?" 

She grabbed at her book bag, rifling through it and laying the sketch out delicately in front of him. He looked at it and his eyes widened. Tracey thought she heard him swear quietly.

"Tracey." He pulled at her wrist, trying to get her attention. "This is _good._ Like, really good."

She looked up at him to glare. "Is that so hard to believe?"

"Yes. You're shit at drawing. This looks like something out of _Lovegood's_ sketchbook, for fuck's sake."

Tracey blushed prettily, not that he could see it, because Luna Lovegood was one of the top artists in their class, passing it with ease- her artistic vision was unimaginably strange but the final pieces couldn't be described as anything but _hypnotic_. 

It was a compliment. A high compliment. 

"Thanks." She said glumly, then reached into her bag again, snatching the photo and tossing it up, where it floated into his waiting hands. "That's her."

Draco lowly whistled. "Wow." 

"Yeah." Tracey looked up and watched as Draco compared the drawing and the photo. 

He hummed aimlessly, his eyes flitting between the two pieces of paper. "You got the likeness pretty good, even for a rough first sketch. And my, my, _my_, Trace, you have a _type. _She's like Cho Chang, but more- _hm_\- punk and short hair." 

"You're just saying that because they're both Asian."

"Am _not._" 

They bickered a bit, mostly just to procrastinate finishing up her sketching and him writing his essay, but Tracey felt slightly comforted when she left Draco's room fifteen minutes later. She set up her desk and her sketchbook, sticking the photo of Pansy onto the wall with blu-tac, and got to work. 

* * *

At her next class, Tracey felt considerably more anxious. Pansy was already ready and sat down, not yet posing as class hadn't started, and was drinking out of a small, iron flask. She looked disdainfully into the flask, closing one eye and bringing it to the other, inspecting it and frowning.

"Fuck." She said, to nobody in particular. "I'm out of brandy."

Dean Thomas at the front of the class couldn't help but let out a snort. She directed her frown at him, and instantly he backtracked. 

"No, no, _sorry._" He said hastily. "My boyfriend drinks brandy in the morning as well. It's the Irish in him."

Pansy's irritation seemed to ebb away, and she smiled wryly. "I like him already."

They started conversing, and Tracey clenched her fist, more angry _at_ the fact that she was jealous, and not out of jealousy _itself_. It was irrational, she _knew_, and it made absolutely _no _sense to be cranky at Dean because she _knew _that he and Seamus Finnegan were, like, the _cutest _couple on campus but-

She glanced at Pansy, who's neck was thrown back in laughter at something Dean said, the pale curve of her throat and perfectly straight teeth in her mouth.

Tracey, as she made her way over to get loose leafs of paper, knocked into Dean's easel, effectively spilling paint all over the floor in artful splatters of yellows and pinks (as if Pansy was a _yellow _and _pink _girl, fat _fucking _chance, she was all purples and blues and harsh reds and-)

Pansy caught her eye, caught Tracey's slightly breathless, slightly smug smirk, and gave Tracey a look that was all too knowing for her to feel at ease when she sat back at her easel. 

* * *

The next few classes, Tracey focused. 

She didn't look at Pansy unless she needed to, referring mostly to the crumpled photograph and her rough sketches. As soon as she sat down at her stool, coming back from getting paints, she bunched her hair into a messy, sort of pathetic excuse of a ponytail, plugged in her earphones, organised her paintbrushes and _worked. _She lost herself in the thick brushstrokes and thin lines, spending _hours _blending paints because when she thought of _Pansy, _she thought of a perfect colour palette, and there was no room to half-ass the navy blues and lavenders she imagined Pansy _feeling. _

When Tracey _did _glance up at Pansy, she more often than not was looking back, but Tracey refused to let herself get distracted by the new colours on Pansy's nails, or how she tapped her bare foot in a silent beat against the cold ceramic floor. 

She looked up. She found what she needed. She went back to work. 

It was the second to last class of working that Tracey got _lost _in her painting- the first time she'd fallen into the process and wasn't able to claw herself out. She had muttered to her professor, who was packing up, that she'd just stay _five more minutes- _

Which became thirty and-

Tracey looked up and-

Pansy. 

Pansy was still sitting on the stool, in perfect positioning like always, looking at her with a smirk, an almost _triumphant _gleam in her eye. Tracey felt herself gulp.

"_Uh_." She began eloquently, pulling out one earbud hastily, the lull of Hozier in her other ear soothing her nerves slightly. "I'm sorry- I, _uh_, didn't mean to hold you back-"

"Nonsense, hun, I'm getting paid to do this." Pansy finally moved out of her pose then, reaching upwards to stretch, her back arching and her head falling back and the way she _moaned _was _far _from innocent.

Tracey's paintbrush clattered to the ground. 

Pansy finished her stretch and looked at Tracey predatorily, her mouth curving into a Cheshire grin. "Wanna let me see your piece?" She folded her fingers together, settling them on her knees neatly, keeping her eyes on Tracey's.

Tracey's pulse raced as she looked at her own painting.

It was good. Better than anything she'd ever produced in this class, like, _ever. _But it felt strangely- strangely _intimate, _to let _Pansy _see herself how Tracey saw her, how Tracey _admired _her. 

"I don't think it's ready." Tracey squeaked. This didn't phase Pansy in the slightest- if anything, her smile grew bigger. 

"Now, hun, don't be like that." She purred, already getting up and sauntering slowly to where Tracey sat, across the room from her. "Pretty please?"

Tracey batted her eyelashes, one, two, three times, trying to figure out if this was an elaborate daydream, a figment of her overactive imagination, a result of too many sleepless nights and one too many slightly expired Ritalins. 

"Okay." Tracey breathed, and inhaled sharply as Pansy came _right behind her, _her front pressed to Tracey's back, her hands on Tracey's shoulders, and her head was so close that she could feel the model's breath against her ear. 

"Oh, wow." Pansy mumbled, sounding less than the normal put-together she normally was. 

They sat silently, for one minute, two minutes, three-

Tracey wanted desperately to turn around, to see what she thought, her nerves shooting through the fucking roof, but she didn't. She _wouldn't. _"That bad?" She joked weakly. Tracey felt the brush of Pansy's short hair moving against her temple as the girl shook her head viciously, as if affronted. 

"No, Tracey." Tracey blanked on where Pansy could've learned her name. "It's _beautiful, _really."

Tracey had told herself she wouldn't turn. She _wouldn't. _

Alas, she did. 

Pansy's eyes dropped to Tracey's lips, subconciously poking her tongue out to wet her own lip.

Tracey leaned in slowly. 

* * *

_Exactly_ like Tracey had predicted, Pansy had tasted like blues and purples and harsh reds.

_Not_ like Tracey predicted, Pansy tasted like all the other colours of the rainbow too. 

**Author's Note:**

> kudos and comments are appreciated xoxooxoxoxoox


End file.
